


Life After You

by hrewannabe



Series: Running Home [2]
Category: Werewolf: The Apocalypse, White Wolf Media, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Aftermaths of Death, Coping with Grief, Discussion of Cannon Violence, Gen, Not Coping with Grief, Spaces left behind, dealing with death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 22:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21023108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrewannabe/pseuds/hrewannabe
Summary: Do they ever think of those left waiting at home when those out fighting for Gaia don't return home?Do they rage? Or worse yet do they kneel on the floor of an apartment and weep for their loss.A WtA collection of shorts primarily following a young Bone Gnawer's path on recovery and learning to live with loss.





	Life After You

The apartment was smothered in silence. An oppressive feeling similar to the way the humidity fills the air in the Virginia summers, that’s how the silence feels. Heavy and crushing in a way the silent apartment had never felt like before. 

Her heart had been pounding.Beating rabbit fast, the way a rabbit’s does as they flee on a hunt through the woods. She can’t sleep, can't close her eyes and drift away even with the looming threat of school in the morning her heart is going to fast, her thoughts somber. So she moves from her murky green room to the soft blue of the living room and turns the lamps on. She tried to sleep, she did, had promised after being told not to wait up for them, but sleep was fleeting and the warm light of the living room kept what every had haunted her brief try at sleep at bay. So she sits, afgahn curled around her shoulders and pooling into her lap as she taps away at her phone, school is far away, whatever had haunted her dreams is too. 

Tessa, the gangly Bone Gnawer had come back that morning alone. That should have been the first sign that something was wrong, but Ira had bounced up from the lazyboy she had spread out on. There was no Vieno ‘creeping’ into the apartment behind her with some snacks or some small gift to apologize for being out so late though There was no hushing noises from Tessa to calm Vieno either, that “shh, Ira might still be sleeping.” Instead she had slinked into the apartment alone an hour before sunrise. Dirty, hair frazzled, jeans frayed, mud and some red pigment caked under her nails, jacket wrapped tight across her torso in a way it never was. Her eyes had been red and her checks wet, Vieno’s satchel clinched in her too big hands. 

She stood in the doorway, gazing but not really seeing. Vieno never bounded into the room behind her eyes wide in happiness, no matter how long Ira waited for him. With the door open though, maybe - she wondered - he had been hurt, hence the bag in Tessa’s hands but he never limped through the door frame.Ira looked at Tessa, and then the door. As she stepped towards the older Bone Gwaner they seemed to startle back to life and turned to close the door. It should have been another sign. Instead Tessa drops the keys to Vieno’s beat up car in the key bowl and drops the bag before grabbing Ira’s hands and leading her to the couch.

“Where’s Vieno?”

Her heart was sinking like a ship.

Tessa had gently pressed upon her shoulders, guiding her to sit on the couch, the afgahn and the lazyboy long forgotten. She knelt down onto the floor next, her hair a dark tangled mess, damp, wind tossed and dirty. Ira in her clean pajama pants and thick oversized sweater had felt oddly out of place at the moment. 

“I’m sorry.” It seemed to be the only thing able to pass the older woman’s lips. “I’m so sorry,” and Ira realized where the red eyes had come from, the wet cheeks not from rain but tears.

It felt like the world was closing in.

Ira gazed at Tessa’s hands. Hands that were just as dirty, if not more, than the rest of her. The red she had noticed under her nails she realizes is blood, dark and caked. Dried a dark red, some of it flecked onto her fingertips. “I’m sorry,” Tessa had breathed out like she was dying. Like she was on the verge of a panic attack, one step away from heaving the air stuck in her lungs. She breathed the way Ira imagined someone was spiraling down the Spiral without someone to pull them back up, wheezing and terrified. The pieces begin to fall into place. The satchel, the keys, the blood, and no Vieno.

Ira shifted her gaze away from Tessa’s hands, looks behind her at the soft blue walls that had before seemed so comforting. She can’t stand to look at the woman’s face in that moment and see the anguish gripping her, to se how the tears had started to fall again. And she knew they were falling, could hear the sniffling that came from crying so long the nose ran. So instead she gazed just past her shoulder at the wall. Eyes latching onto a photo of Vieno and a group of five people all wearing matching green shirts.

“I’m so sorry Ira, this wasn’t supposed to happen” Tessa breathed and Ira felt the same nausea roll in her stomach as that one time. Except, she couldn’t remember exactly what that time was anymore. “He wasn’t supposed to go out his way!” Tessa sobs openly now, hands grasping Ira’s clutching too tight, nails making half moon indents where they’re long enough to.”I should have been there!” Tess has seemed to wail at that, voice cracking.

Her heart seemed to stop.

“Where’s Vieno, Tessa? Tessa?” 

Ira had felt the panic rising up like a storm cloud. Before it hadn’t been clear how bad it had been, but the admission that he wasn’t supposed to go out like that was the final nail in the coffin. Ira’s gaze had snapped back to Tessa, hands shaking off hers, and moving to grasp her shoulders. Tessa’s too big hands covering her face now as she cried “I’m sorry” and “gone, he’s gone.”

She stared.

Time seemed to stop, and the blood had rushed in her ears a pounding rapid fast tempo.

She didn’t want to believe this was happening again.

They’d barely had more than two months together.

A pack.

A family.

A home.

_ gone _

Ira’s hands start to shake and she leaned over, curling in on herself and she keened. Eyes pressed tight together, hot tears starting to leak. “Not again” she wailed and Tessa drew her into her lap and curled around her. Both of the Bone Gnawers sat on the floor gripped tight and keened for the loss of the young man who had lived with them.They mourned together and a heavy weight settled on their shoulders. 

  
  


Across the room, by the door the satchel vibrated for a few minutes and then stopped.


End file.
